Following on from the hugely succesful event, we have received requests for comment from the Sun, Buzzfeed and from Middle Eastern Eye. In response to the following questions we have published the following reply.

The subject of the event was Tolerating the Intolerant - the abuse of Hindu Human Rights in Europe and in India. A core subject was the sustained targeting and abuse of Hindu and Sikh girls .. their selection on the basis of their religion and their subsequent physical and emotional abuse for the purposes of forced conversion to Islam. This phenomenon has been reported here in the UK but has also been a major problem in India and most especially in West Bengal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Mr Ghosh has a great deal of support from the Bengali Muslim community in India who too find the targeting of vulnerable girls abhorrent and completely unIslamic.

Evidence was presented at the event which showed that

In 21st century Europe the majority of European nations do not accept the Dharmic traditions as state recognised religions including Belgium, the home of the European Parliament. This is religious discrimination.

That 49 million Hindus are missing from Bangladesh and

that the grooming of Hindu & Sikh vulnerable girls is occurring on an "industrial scale", with these girls then being channelled into lives of crime, prostitution and trafficking.

We are disappointed that despite the above, the focus of one segment of the media is on the tweets made by a grass roots activist, who may be guilty of intemperate language, allowing for difference in vocabulary and regional nuance, but he is certainly not guilty of crimes against vulnerable girls nor of blatant institutional discrimination.

In addition we are working directly with British Imams who have come forward and are keen to see the rights of vulnerable women of all religions protected. We would welcome an opportunity to discuss this with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and equally we are working with Sikh community leaders, who also attended the event and who are deeply concerned at this phenomenon, one which has been causing disharmony within our British multi faith communities for decades.

Many victims are unable to come forward because of the cultural importance of family honour and this issue needs to be brought to light so that victims can be encouraged to come forward and be helped to recover their self esteem and dignity.

You will have noted that even Pakistani Politician Imran Khan (https://www.dawn.com/news/1365958) has commented on the prevalence of this violent strategy which is destructive of community cohesion and harmony.Presumably Mr Khan is not an Islamophobe. Mr Ghosh has been working at grass roots level in India and his organisation has successfully helped to re rehabilitate over 300 such trauma victims, and he was invited to provide data, photographic evidence and witness testimony and statistics to inform parliamentarians of the ground reality and to submit this data to the forthcoming Report on Religion Based Human Rights Violations of Hindus.

As Hon Bob Blackman stated in Parliament:-

“... I thank the Hon. Lady for notifying me that she was going to raise this point of order. She has inadvertently misled the House. Let me be clear: I did not invite Tapan Ghosh to the House of Commons. I hosted, in my capacity as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for British Hindus, two functions last Wednesday, which Tapan Ghosh attended. One was the annual Diwali celebration on the House of Commons Terrace, which a number of hon. and right hon. Members attended. Subsequently, in the evening, we had the launch by the National Council of Hindu Temples of a report into Hindu minority rights in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Tapan Ghosh was invited by the National Council of Hindu Temples to attend that meeting and present evidence of physical attacks, rapes, forced marriages and forced conversions that have taken place in West Bengal and other places.

I have made clear, and the National Council of Hindu Temples has made clear, that it was only in that capacity—as presenting that evidence—that that individual was invited to this House. He made no abhorrent remarks at the meeting, and I am quite clear that I and the National Council of Hindu Temples do not agree with the views he previously stated. We do not accept them, and we do not endorse them in any shape or form, but it is right that this House has the opportunity, and that Members have the opportunity, to hear evidence from people of what is happening in other countries.”

It’s clear that people who raise this thorny issue are wholly inappropriately and maliciously labelled by certain members of “the left” and their apologists, as ‘Islamophobes’ or ‘racists’. We saw this with the recent sacking of Sarah Champion from the Shadow Cabinet, who bravely spoke out against the disproportionate number of Pakistani Muslim heritage males being convicted in sexual grooming gang cases where the girls were of disproportionately high non-muslim origin. The truth is as in Mr Ghosh’s case, that this trend is nothing but an orchestrated mechanism to shut down those who presume to speak inconvenient truths. We are unaware of the other allegations and remarks you refer to and if there is truth in them, we reject them without reservation.